Hello.

Friday, October 19, 2001 12:32 p.m.
Was up late playing hearts with the gang last night. Ate too much, and woke up REALLY woozy.

Don't really have much to blog on right now. Listening to Dylan's Love and Theft. Not bad. Probably take a walk today. It's a walk-taking day. And now I better go figure out what Liz is up to.

Think I might do some reading/writing too, if just to have something to blog about.

Thursday, October 18, 2001 10:36 a.m.
If you've got Flash and some free time, this is pretty impressive/amusing.

I was driving Liz to work today, and while I was stopped at a red light an ambulance drove by. Except it said "Ambul-ants" on the side, and "Drag-off Exterminators" on the back.

And I went to Dunkin Donuts. And I noticed that the notices on the coffee pots to make fresh coffee every ten minutes were in quotes.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001 11:44 p.m.
I often wonder about this myself.

Brain... poop. Got three golds in Tony Hawk 2 with Buuuuuuucky. God that's an addictive game. Whyyyyyyy....

Wednesday, October 17, 2001 07:33 p.m.
I have cleaned the desk! Whoa. Funny, it makes it much more evident that Liz's scanner is much larger than Liz's computer.

Objects currently on Liz's desk:

1. A scanner.
2. A laptop.
3. A minidisc player.
4. A green frog which ribbits and exhibits glowing red eyes when the phone rings.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001 01:33 p.m.
Ok. I feel leagues better now. I was REALLY zonked last night. Sorry I vanished from the game... I couldn't concentrate on what was happening, so I figured I wasn't really going to be any use to anyone.

Yesterday I took a walk down along the beach and took some pictures of the fall foliage. It's VERY beautiful up here right now.

Liz is hogging all the new books. I think I may have to bring justice to her.

Moss linked to this webcomic thingy, which is pretty durn funny. Another site to add to my list. I'd post the rest of my list, but it's pretty predictable geek stuff. (PA, PvP, etc)

Tuesday, October 16, 2001 11:20 p.m.
Ugh. TIIIIIRED. Log tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001 09:02 p.m.
Good lord. Eminem is vaguely disturbing, sure, but Tori Amos covering Eminem is REALLY, REALLY disturbing.

Liz is going down to Boston (or thereabouts) tomorrow. I may change my mind, but I think I'm probably going to stay here and work on the wedding pics, among other things. I may have an archive/webpage up soon for interested parties. We shall see.

Seth... I'm working on trying to remember that tables thing. But it sounded like you weren't too anxious to fix that.

That's about it.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001 09:02 p.m.
Good lord. Eminem is vaguely disturbing, sure, but Tori Amos covering Eminem is REALLY, REALLY disturbing.

Liz is going down to Boston (or thereabouts) tomorrow. I may change my mind, but I think I'm probably going to stay here and work on the wedding pics, among other things. I may have an archive/webpage up soon for interested parties. We shall see.

Seth... I'm working on trying to remember that tables thing. But it sounded like you weren't too anxious to fix that.

That's about it.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001 01:19 a.m.
You know what I said earlier? Forget it. I was kidding myself.

I feel like playing video games and letting my brain rot a little. Been thinking too much lately. Of course, it's 1:30 in the morning.

Monday, October 15, 2001 11:08 p.m.
Seth- Pitas default format has a nested table (which is lame, but nevermind). You'll notice that the table containing your blog content (the one below your header) is actually two tables on top of one another. Try deleting the outer table... that might help.

Or it could be that #333333 is rendered weirdly in Netscape. God knows. Netscape 4 is the tool of the devil.

You know that thing when you make someone feel bad, and you feel that you should feel VISCERALLY bad about that? And you feel bad, but not viscerally bad? Not instinctively bad?

Yeah.

Monday, October 15, 2001 02:17 p.m.
I think I need a T-shirt that says "Amazon user reviews made me KILL". I just read a review claiming book X was derivate of book Y, when book Y was written 15 YEARS after book X. The hell.

Oh, forgot to mention this. I was buying plane tickets, and I looked at the "meal options". There were a number of options like "Kosher, Diabetic, etc". But there was also "bland."

Oh, and here's a question. Let's say you want to infect a member of congress with a dangerous illness. Why, in God's name, would you pick Tom "oh, well, we're all going to die." Daschle? I mean, really.

I think I have tamed the scanner. Boy are engineers a menace to stable drivers and support software everywhere.

~
Monday, October 15, 2001 10:25 a.m.
Hmm. Had a lot of trouble getting into Pitas this morning. Not sure if it's Mozilla or Pitas.

The play last night was very charming... sort of a dramatic lecture. The actors didn't take it too seriously, and there was a really great reading of Wilde's story "The Selfish Giant".

After that Liz and I went out and got a bite to eat, then came home and watched Spy Kids. Which is a WEIRD movie. That's about all I have to say about that.

Seth- give me a file size limitation on pictures, and let me know if you want more smaller pics, or less larger pics.

Everyone seems like they're in a Borges mood lately. I don't think I am, actually... I'm not sure WHAT kind of mood I'm in. I think I'm in the mood to read something frivolous or funny. Might give that a try.

Actually, I don't think that's true. I think I'm actually in the rarest of Andrew Sarazin moods: the poetry mood. Weird.

Oh, and without further ado (and since I finally found it) the Johnny wedding picture:



Click to see it bigger. Yes, every person in this picture is a former Johnny. Actually, one is a CURRENT Johnny. But anyway.

Sunday, October 14, 2001 02:23 p.m.
Wow. Buying plane tickets was a lot more stressful than last year. I had to stop myself from picking small-plane flights over flights that, you knnow, actually GOT ME THERE.

GOD I have no enthusiasm for today. Joy.

Sunday, October 14, 2001 12:49 a.m.
So Susie got me a demonic frog-phone. It sits on my desk, staring at me. When I turn on the headset, its eyes glow red. Needless to say, it's pretty cool.

Went over to the inlaws (what a strange concept) and had pizza, watched movies. Tomorrow we're going to see some kind of theatre thing in Gorham involving Oscar Wilde.

I need to do something worth blogging about. Entries like this are boring to write, let alone read.

Saturday, October 13, 2001 02:12 p.m.
Here's a picture of Liz and I. Not the greatest picture we have, but it shows us nicely framed, at least.



Hopefully that'll fit in okay. I'm still fiddling with the page, trying various things. At least the ultra-boring "trees" theme is gone.

Now it's laundry time.

Saturday, October 13, 2001 10:57 a.m.
Huh. They were supposed to close my street today, but as of yet they haven't.

Liz was up really late last night playing with the scanner. It's quite an addictive thing. We seem to have got it to the point where it doesn't explode the computer alot, which is a good thing.

Here's a poem that I enjoyed reading last night, but was too tired to blog it in. It's a translation, obviously.

The imminent is as immutable
As rigid yesterday. There is no matter
That rates more than a single, silent letter
In the eternal and inscrutable
Writing whose book is time. He who believes
He's left his home already has come back.
Life is a future and well traveled track.
Nothing dismisses us. Nothing leaves.
Do not give up. The prison is bereft
Of light, its fabric is incessant iron,
But in some corner of your mean environs
You might discover a mistake, a cleft.
The road is fatal as an arrow's flight
But God is watching in the narrowest light.


--- Jorge Luis Borges
(trans. by Eric McHenry)

BTW: I think I'll post a wedding picture a day up here, so be on the lookout if you're interested.

Friday, October 12, 2001 04:53 p.m.
Ka-ching! Ok, obviously that's a web-quality JPG... about 12kb so some serious loss in quality. But still decent. I'm not a great judge at this point since I'm using this crappy laptop screen.

Now, to figure out how to do that in less than 300 steps.

Friday, October 12, 2001 04:51 p.m.
Ok. Testing 1, 2, 3.



So, let us see whether that worked.

Friday, October 12, 2001 03:05 p.m.
The scanner has landed! It's an Epson... I looked around for Umax, Remi, but didn't see any. Things seem to be scanning quite well. This means that wedding pics are now available. Seth- let me know if you would like them emailed to you, or whether you'd like to see them on the web. I have very limited webspace at the moment, so I could send you more via email.

Liz is brainstorming about her art page. One thing I'm wondering... does anyone know anything about scanning pages with "soft" media like pastels? I'm kind of leery of getting crud on the scanner surface.

I'm going to do some cleaning up today. Promised Liz I'd do the dishes, and the desk is in serious need of... i don't know, a firestorm or something.

I can't help but feel kind of edgy over this terrorist business... between the anthrax scares and the FBI warning of more attacks, I think everyone's a little paranoid. Everyone out today seemed like they were handling things, though.

Thursday, October 11, 2001 07:24 p.m.
Let it be known that I fought the DMV, and I won.

And why is it necessary to place the two offices required for vehicle registration at the furthest possible distance from one another. Oy....

Now I'm at home with Jelly Belly Beans! Yummmm. The page will change once again within the next few days. It sounds like we're going to get a scanner, so I'll have wedding (and other) pictures for various folks also within the next few days. BTW: if anyone has any cheap scanner suggestions, let me know.

Sounds like Liz is interested in creating a page for her creative endeavors. Thanks for chatting with her, Remi... I think it really cheered her up.

Thursday, October 11, 2001 10:21 a.m.
Ugh... this is one of these "Liz is hyper, Andrew feels like the dead" morning. Don't you just LOVE that?

Probably go out for some food this morning. Then deal with car issues.

DO you realize it's been a month?

Wednesday, October 10, 2001 09:40 p.m.
So things look a little different now. Don't worry if you don't like it... I'm just fooling around. Will probably change as soon as I have a better idea.

Got new car insurance today, so the vee-hick-al is legal once again. Yeah.

Tomorrow I might make it a Maine car. And get a Maine license. Sounds weeeeird. Next thing I'll be voting up here.

Seth's blog makes me wonder whether blog layouts reflect a person's fashion sense.

Wednesday, October 10, 2001 11:14 a.m.
Ugh. I need to make sure I need to sleep before midnight tonight. This whole "taking 3 hours to wake up" thing is getting old.

Jim and Karen were over last night... we watched Clerks on DVD.

Not much else to talk about right now. Still thinking about doing a redesign.

Tuesday, October 9, 2001 07:19 p.m.
Ugh. Well, I got the whole "shoe store" experience over for this season. God, have you been in one of these lately? I saw shoes that must have been designed by pitiless aliens from the future. I can't wear tennis shoes anymore.

So I got some nice brown pseudo-hiking shoes/boots that were inexpensive and comfortable. I figure the winter up here will probably reward the prepared.

I am currently playing some kind of bizarre word game with Seth, and discussing RP with Remi. IM is nice.

Tuesday, October 9, 2001 02:07 a.m.
Ok, all fixed now.

Sum total of changes: Removed Enigma: Gravity of Love.
Swapped the last two tracks.
Stuck Penguin Cafe Orchestra: Perpetuum Mobile on the end.

Of course, now the compilation has a completely different tone, but that's cool.

Tuesday, October 9, 2001 01:44 a.m.
On further inspection: everything works except the Enigma has to go. Not sure what I was thinking there.

Now that I've taken that out of the TOC, I've got 6.24 remaining to stick something in somewhere. Hmm.

Tuesday, October 9, 2001 12:31 a.m.
By my will, so it is done!

Track list for my new mix-MD:

1. Jocelyn Pook: Upon this Rock
2. Plaid: Dead Sea
3. Orbital: The Girl with the Sun in her Head
4. Amon Tobin: Easy Muffin
5. Air: You Make it Easy
6. Jocelyn Pook: Naval Officer
7. Gorillaz: Tomorrow Comes Today
8. Enigma: Gravity of Love
9. Alpha: Still
10. Bjork: Joga
11. Orbital: Belfast
12. Six String Samurai Sndtrk: Relentless Sun
13. Deep Forest: Sweet Lullaby Remix
14. Akira Sndtrk: Exodus from the Underground Fortress
15. Amon Tobin: Chocolate Lovely
16. Six String Samurai Sndtrk: Fly Away Little Butterfly
17. Masked Ball: Jocelyn Pook

Monday, October 8, 2001 07:19 p.m.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the COLD HAS ARRIIIIIIIVED! May it never leave.

Walked down the street for eggs and boy is it bracing out there! God I love this temperature. Makes me feel like running around. As Ric Flair would say, "WOOOO!"

There's the prospect of waffles tonight. Of course, I just ate a LOT of candy corn, so I may not be up to it. Uurggh. Man I suck.
Plaid's Rest Proof Clockwork is kind of good background music. But it's not as satisfying as I thought it would be at first. Ah well. Not every CD can be my favorite CD. I haven't dragged out that Boards of Canada CD in weeks. Maybe I'll do that now. And maybe I'll work on that "biiig" MD tonight.

I've made kind of a mental commitment not to talk about outside world goings on here, because I don't like the result. So my last word on the subject: I hate everyone QED.

I got some writing done yesterday. It's in that dangerous period where I can kind of see where everything is going and it bores me a little. I think I may go back to doing background work, as that is a nearly insurmountable feat.

I need to find a job where constantly starting things but never finishing anything is a GOOD thing. Any ideas?

Monday, October 8, 2001 11:49 a.m.
And it's yet another week. Had a lot of trouble waking up this morning. Coooold.

Remi, sorry I was so incoherent last night. Too many m&ms. They're all gone now.

The similarity of recent events to the opening exposition of bad cyberpunk novels has left me with a curiously detached feeling.

I keep meaning to make another comp. MD for the car. Something with good "cruising over the bridge and staring into the sky... it's so biiiig" music.

Liz is taking a shower while listening to Jay-z. I think I should be disturbed by that.

Sunday, October 7, 2001 11:42 a.m.
I woke up as Liz was leaving for work this morning, and it was so cold that I just turned over and went back to sleep. Enter weird dream.

I was infiltrating an island where people dressed in medieval outfits and tried to kill one another. I had this little main-gauche type thing that looked really fake, and a folding pocket-knife. I snuck into this temple-type place and dueled a pair of really goth-looking women and killed them. As a reward, this weird Robert Carlyle lookalike gave me a pair of pocketknives, as well as a mandolin with a concealed knive. But it wasn't actually a mandolin... that's what he called it, but it was actually a jug made of bamboo. It was full of whisky or something. So people started coming at me from all directions and I had to jump down onto this waterslide to escape. A bunch of homeless people were waiting at the bottom and gave me high-fives.

Yeah. So that was messed up. Then I woke up and lay in bed for a while, not wanting to leave the warm bed, but not wanting to fall asleep again.

I have decided that the Mozilla problem occurs when I come back to the entry from another window. Whatever that means.

Today I REALLY WILL clean the house. Honest. Karen and Jim are coming over tonight, but Liz seemed really socially exhausted last night and I'm not sure whether it'll be much fun. You never know.

And I'm going to get some writing done, honest.

Saturday, October 6, 2001 06:22 p.m.
Not much going on here today. I seem to have semi-mastered the whole "parking downtown without paying" thing. Which is either good or bad.

Currently taking notes in my head on what makes music "interesting" to my ear. Listening to Plaid, "Rest Proof Clockwork".

Oh, here's a quote from a music review that helps a bit. " (Band X) brings beauty where I usually find sterile coldness." Yeah. I think that's part of it.

Huh. Mozilla seems to have some issues with this form box, which become more evident as the entry becomes larger. Annoying.

Think I might do a redesign of the blog at some point. Just for kicks.

Friday, October 5, 2001 11:11 p.m.
Ugh. Had yet another fury-inducing clash with Windows 98... this time on a machine at Liz's work. I got it working again. Barely.

I miss having a local machine running Linux. Liz's laptop is running Windows 98 right now for a variety of reasons (games, ease of use for her, and a little program called notetab I've grown attached to) but I need a good old white box. I may break down in desperation and buy an older, cheaper computer.

Ah well. At least I'm using Mozilla. Which is getting nicer and nicer, though it's still not ready for primetime. Soon! Maybe?

Liz is going to a bookfair tomorrow in Boston, and will be gone all day. I should get "something" done. Some writing... put an application or two in... and clean up my desk! Believe me, if you could see it now. I feel a terrible temptation to go down to Bullmoose and browse CDs, though.

Seth, I missed your package AGAIN. Oy. Monday is my last chance, apparently. Next time, don't send it goddamned certified! Or whatever.

Oh, and thanks for leaving all those toiletries in the apartment after the wedding! It's actually come in handy... the razor you bought (which is ridiculously over-engineered... typical "think with your penis" american design) had a clean blade on the back, and my shaver unexpectedly went on the fritz.

Ok, I need to stop rambling.

"Did we nail the messiah to a crunchy-nut cross? No, we didn't. That cross was made of wood. And it tasted foul."

Thursday, October 4, 2001 08:51 p.m.
A lot of people say that they find comfort in routine. And I believe that they do. But when I'm at wit's end, I generally do something out of my routine- it kind of breaks off the previous part of the day, like turning the page of a book. Today I was feeling annoyed, so I went to a barbershop and got the old brown monster trimmed. And it was NICE. And we made fun of the Cape ladies passing by, and talked about news and the weather.

And I think I'm going to have to put this barber on the payroll. He attacked my hair strategically, like some kind of professional samurai. It didn't intimidate him, oh no. He whirled me about and zipped the razor recklessly over my head, giant chunks of hair blowing around the room. He also shaved the back of my neck with a STRAIGHT razor, like "ain't no thing". Old school. And in the end, my hair was as neat as its been in the old days.

Found some interesting music on Amazon today. Might go see if Bull Moose has any of it tomorrow.

"Find out, words are the same when you shout""

Thursday, October 4, 2001 03:24 p.m.
Ok, I just seriously scared two middle-aged women.

Episode 1:
I was driving down commercial street. The "Victory" was in (a MASSIVE cruise liner) and a bunch of buses were lined up to greet the passengers and take them on little touristy day trips. As I was driving by one, I noticed that it had "LAMERS" in big red letters on the sign. So naturally I burst out laughing and pointed out the window. The woman behind me (driving a red Jeep Cherokee) pursed her lips at me, as if to say "Bad!" I began to bounce up and down in my car seat whilst blasting P Diddy. She decided to take the road less traveled by raving lunatics.

Episode 2:
I was in the grocery store. A nice motherly looking woman was passing me back where the deli was. Just as she passed me on the right, I glanced over and noticed a sign that read "Kielbasa special!" I loudly announced "Kielbasa" in kind of a Peter Lorre voice. She flinched involuntarily and gave me a look.

I don't know... I'm not sure I'm cut out for this whole civilized society thing.

Seth, your package came but I wasn't here, so they'll try again tomorrow. Thanks for sending it!

Thursday, October 4, 2001 10:02 a.m.
Listmania quote of the day:

"Readable, in the same way that Lifetime movies are watchable."

Might get off my ass today. That would be new. Mmm... something smells like yummy mexican food. Need nourishment.

Seth, sorry... I was off in my rant zone and not reading/listening clearly. I know what you mean. I don't think I give "real" teachers a fair shake: partly because I got burned badly as a kid, and partly because I think I know everything. But anyway.

"It's a cry for survival! For their survival, and for OUR survival!"

Wednesday, October 3, 2001 02:40 p.m.
Seth, have you ever been in a lecture hall class with, say, 120-plus students and a professor with a giant head? It sounds pleasant, but in my experience it's either

A: Like eating cotton candy. Fun but very unfulfilling.

or

B: Like being trapped in a burning room with rabid howler monkeys.

I had the same reaction sometimes at St. John's (that you did). I eventually decided that it wasn't really that a lack of leadership on the part of my tutors, although I think tutors not acknowledging the responsibility they have is a big problem. For me, it was really the way that the school actively warred against the seperation from intellectual life and personal life. When you're being spoonfed "knowledge" at U of Big USA, you can forget about it when you leave the lecture hall and go out into the world. But everything became personal at St. John's, to a degree I sometimes wasn't comfortable with. It's funny, since they advertise it as a benefit (and I think it is to some people).

Oh, and Al-Amarja-ites, I'm sorry I left in such a hurry last night. Issues, issues.

Now I get to go shoe-shopping with the ladies. Please end my pain.

Tuesday, October 2, 2001 06:57 p.m.
I shall join the trend and archive now, I think.

Arrgh! Seth, you are now my mortal enemy. I went ALL OVER TOWN looking for a copy of Over the Edge today. Well, maybe not all over town, but to all the usual suspects. Sigh. The bizarre wheels within wheels of our lives.

Ok, whoever told me that the new Orbital album was crappy was really on crack. I mean, it's different only in that it's not as annoying as Middle of Nowhere. It's kind of revisiting the territory of Snivilization, only with a somewhat different perspective. Anyway, enjoying it so far.

Seth, I dig your blog. Nuff said. Though I still think you should make it burn with colory fire.

And if it makes you feel any better, we're just as directionless up here.